A Posthuman Accounting of Participation in Youth Participatory Action Research

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Liberatory Research Approaches With Young People: Youth Participatory Action Research and Youth Resistance (Table 25)

Abstract

This posthumanist study examines a novice youth participatory action research (YPAR) practitioner’s first attempt at bringing YPAR into her classroom. Posthumanism allowed for the accounting of intra-acting agents within the YPAR endeavor. Beyond the human actors, this study takes account of the participation of nonhuman agents. YPAR in schools affords the amplification of student voice and agency. However, this is constrained by larger issues of schooling along with class time and sizes. Nonhuman agents like desks, handouts, and time played an active role and were entangled with the human actors producing experiences that run counter to YPAR. This posthumanist framing is a push for YPAR scholars to engage with posthuman scholarship widening our analysis of what matter is mattering.

Author

• Thomas Albright, Georgia State University